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Sixth-Grade Status

August 12, 2016

Membership Resolutions for the Michigan High School Athletic Association for the 2016-17 school year are now due. This is an annual rite of summer for school boards and governing bodies, intended to be a time when those entities recommit to following all the rules, all the time.

A new wrinkle in the routine is the opportunity to include 6th-graders in middle school membership. Approximately two-thirds of member middle schools are doing so.

What is not known to us through the Membership Resolution process is how those 6th-graders will be involved – where the school will have separate 6th-grade teams and where 6th-graders will be part of teams for 7th- and/or 8th-graders.

Junior high/middle schools which join the MHSAA at the 6th-grade level may allow 6th-graders to participate with 7th- and 8th-graders in individual sports (e.g., bowling, cross country, track & field, swimming & diving, tennis and wrestling). With the approval of their middle school leagues, this may occur also in team sports.

The MHSAA’s Junior High/Middle School Committee will depart from other standing committees by meeting twice during 2016-17 and subsequent school years. Its full agenda will include a review of how 6th-graders are being accommodated by middle schools and their leagues.

All of this is under the over-arching goal to involve more students in school-sponsored sports at younger ages, and to capture their interests and meet their needs within the philosophies of educational athletics.

A Healthy Future

April 24, 2015

As stated in this space a week ago, the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years complete an eight-year period during which we have addressed for two years each Health Histories, Heads, Heat and Hearts.

What will the following two years – 2017-18 and 2018-19 – bring? Here are some aspirations – some predictions, but not quite promises – of where we will be.

First, we will have circled back to the first “H” – Health Histories – and will be well on our way to universal use of paperless pre-participation physical examination forms and records.

Second, we will have made the immediate reporting and permanent recordkeeping of all head injury events routine business in Michigan school sports, for both practices and contests, in all sports and at all levels..

Third, we will have promoted more objectivity and backbone to removal from play decisions for suspected concussions at both practices and events where medical personnel are not present.

Fourth, we will have provided a safety net for families who are unable to afford no-deductible, no exclusion concussion care insurance that insists upon and pays for complete recovery from head injury symptoms before return to activity is permitted.

All of this is for all sports on all levels, both genders.

We should be able to do this, and more, without judicial threat or legislative mandate. We won’t wait for others to set the standards or appropriate the funds, but be there to welcome the requirements and resources when they finally arrive.